Empire Under Sun
by Laziness Incarnate
Summary: Leonardo alive, and his brothers dead: this is Karai's revenge, not her mercy. An AU taking place after the episode "Same As It Never Was" (SAINW).


**Empire Under Sun**

He wakes to find:

Cold concrete floor, pressed against his cheek. His own breaths, wet and shuddering, rattling in his chest. _Sssshhh ssss ssshhh. _

Footfalls, the dull thud of rubber boots. Long human strides, firm and martial. _Thump thump thump._

The slick stink of human sweat, of gunpowder and gun oil close by, that distinct brew of _danger run kill_.

His sword. His sword not in his hand.

_Do not show your fear. _

Then: human fingers, two of them, placing themselves lightly against the side of his neck. Pressing down, still gentle, then sliding to the back of his neck, the base of his head, where Karai's blade-where-he remembers-

He has to force himself not to move, to keep breathing.

"...just a field analysis, so we'll have to do a more thorough job in the lab, but the her short sword was definitely coated with at least a blot-cotting agent and a sedative, both fast-acting. So this cut, which should have been fatal..." a rise in intonation, "...bled profusely for about about a minute, as you can see, then clotted up. But by then, with all the blood on the floor, and with him being unconscious because of the sedative…"

"Everyone assumed he was dead, so didn't bother to kill him." A second voice. Even-toned, reeking authority. "So now we have to figure out to do with him." Exaggerated stresses, slightly nasal emission.

A jolt of recognition: Chapman.

"Yes..." The first voice hesitates. "in a way, the sedative saved his life just as much as the blood-clotting agent..."

"These chemicals were only on the wakizashi? Not on the katana?" A hint of danger now, a tempered coldness that sounds borrowed, somehow, on Chapman's tongue.

"Yes. We've examined the longer sword and there was no trace of either agent. I can only guess what Mistress Karai was thinking-"

"You do not _guess _at the intentions of your mistress, even now. Especially now. Do you understand me?"

A jolt of recognition: grief disguised as anger, grief newly borne, grief wild and treacherous in its rawness.

Then: a pause. The rustle of cotton against cotton and the sharper susurration of steel against polyester. Fear-infected chi. Breaths, sharp and shallow. Awareness of breath, awareness of death.

"I apologize, sir."

Another pause, deliberate.

Then: "Put the creature in the cells. Find out what he knows."

And Leonardo realizes that he is alive.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

They take away his sunglasses.

Then they see the ruin of his eyes, and give them back.

He assumes they throw him into the deepest cell, where no light penetrates, but he's been in darkness for so long he can't properly appreciate the difference.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

Cleaned wounds wrapped in bandages. Antibiotics ground up into his food.

They heal him so they can hurt him.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

_Click_.

The switch is flipped.

At first it's just pinpricks of discomfort where the wires burrow into his skin, surgeon-precise. Tiny needles, like the sensation of blood returning to his legs after they're fallen asleep.

He hears the dial turning to the right.

Now there is something lurid wriggling under his skin. Wrists and ankles strain audibly against their bindings.

The dial turns a little more.

The snap of firecrackers in his veins. Muscles tighten, joints lock, galvanized by fear and anticipation and electricity. There is no possibility of defense. Boiling pressure, snaking from his toes to the top of his skull. There is no possibility of thought.

And a little more.

His legs, his bowels, his lungs, his heart seizing, stopping, his brain seizing, stopping, then down again through his heart his lungs his bowels his legs, endless circuitry. Mouth gaping in a silent, frozen scream.

And a little more.

The acrid smell of burning flesh. Of smoke of bone of spirit, of spirit ripped from flesh, spiralling into realms of nothingness more profound than meditation, a soul rising above itself, seeing itself, colours and shapes and _light_, seeing seeing _seeing_-

_Is that me? _

Blessed disassociation. Blessed disassembly of pain, of feeling, of self.

_Click._

...until the machine is abruptly turned off, and Leonardo slams back into his body so suddenly he can't even gasp at the excruciating physicality of it. His flesh learns to feel again, moment by agonizing moment; the seconds stretch into a worldly eternity.

This is the easy part.

It's harder when Chapman talks. When Leonardo's heart is still pounding a desperate drumbeat in his ears and his mind sizzles with the aftershocks of his electrocution and adrenaline is rushing through his veins and a voice says, blandly, _a reasonable exchange of information can be met_. When he is tempted to tell everything, every secret the rebellion ever trusted him with, supply lines and names and security codes, if only the voice will tell him if his brothers are alive, if Leonardo is finally, finally alone-

-until his heart quails, and he realizes he does not want to know.

So Leonardo remains in the dark.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

_Pain is to be welcomed_, he tells himself, like a mantra, _because it tells you that you are strong. _

Is that something Splinter used to say? No, not quite. How was it again?

_Pain is to be welcomed, because it tells you that you are strong _enough.

_Endure_, he tells himself, through torture followed by boredom followed by torture followed by boredom followed by the endless recycling of his own recriminations. _You are a ninja, and to be a ninja means to endure. _

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

At some point, Chapman says:

"You and your brothers didn't accomplish anything with your attack."

Grand sweeps of intonation.

"The Empire continues. Under me."

A faint stirring of dank dungeon air-Chapman has thrown out his right hand dramatically. Wasted on Leonardo, who cannot see it, and who does not care about the Empire, because everything he cared about he left in that room where he was supposed to die. But Chapman has always been an expressive one.

"We turn on the lights here, for my visits," he goes on, "because we thought we'd give you a treat. But you can't even tell, can you?" Sharper now, mocking. Obvious in its need for acknowledgement. Boyish still. "You haven't spoken a word. You scream plenty, though. You will break soon.

Leonardo is barely listening. He feels lightheaded, almost giddy. He blames it on the electric shock therapy.

"You'll talk. They all talk in the end."

Chapman is the one doing all the talking. He always did love his own voice. Why did the Shredder hire such noisy scientists? Stockman was even worse. Most of the Shredder's problems, come to think of it, arose from poor choice in personnel-even the daughter he chose. Especially the daughter he chose.

_I could have been her_, he thinks. _He tried to choose me too. _

Chapman's voice finally stops droning its evil-villain drone.

"This is so pointless." Sudden juvenile exasperation. "Just tell us, you stupid animal. Where is O'Neill hiding? Where is the rebellion?"

_We both honoured our fathers. We both failed in our trust. I should have killed her years ago. She should have killed me years go. She should have killed me. She should have killed me. _

Eventually, Chapman leaves in disgust.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

_But none of us starts out a monster_, Leonardo thinks. _Not even Karai. _

Love made her a monster, stole her honour away-but left a piece of it in her heart, enough to cut her in two. Better to throw away one or the other. Better to choose than not to choose.

_Better to kill me, to obey your master and release me to mine. _

But the moment of symmetry is past now; Karai has failed him. He has forgiven her for so many things, but he cannot forgive her this.

_If I'd been you, the choice would have been easy_. _I would have given you the sword, my own honour be damned. _

He knows he is capable of it-has seen it in himself, time and time again, as though his morals are a switch inside him, an on or off, one or zero, Donatello's beloved binary code, nothing more than an electric current cutting through his brain.

_When we give our hearts to monsters, the monsters devour them whole._

He hears the door to his cell open, hears the twisting of the wires.

_Click_, thinks Leonardo.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

Diodes and circuits and other things he doesn't know the name of crash and splinter on the floor. Chapman swears and screeches his displeasure.

Leonardo breathes, and breathes again, still alive.

A hand slams on the table right next to his shoulder. Human exhalation comes too close, human hair tickles at Leonardo's face. The smell of alcohol permeates.

"Why did she spare you?" A rasp of air in, a rasp of air out.

Leonardo knows who _she_ is.

"She only used that wakizashi on you. She killed Raphael with her katana. She sent her legions after the other one, and they eviscerated him. His guts poured out, I saw it. Your brothers' lives meant nothing to her, she killed them without hesitation, but _you_..."

No, _no. _Leonardo does not want to hear these truths. He wants Raphael to be alive, wants to hear Michelangelo laugh once again. He wants Donatello to not have been a dream. Better the darkness than this. Better dead than left like this, half alive, half ground-up corpse.

_Damn it, Karai, why couldn't you choose? _

Hands grasp his throat. Fingers press against his jawbones, wrap around his windpipe.

"Why did she do this?"

Leonardo cannot breathe, cannot speak.

"Why are you still alive!"

He cannot speak, but he knows the answer.

"Why _you_!"

_Because_, Leonardo screams silently, _she saw the monster in me in her in me. _

Long moments of entertaining death, of helpless choking sounds and straining against his bonds, until there are white bursts of light crowding into his darkness. For a moment he thinks he can see again, a miracle: the sun is just over there again, after years clouded in smog. His family is just over there again, after years of broken promises.

Just a little further to the sun...

Then: a laugh, choking on its own bitterness. Hands pulling away from his neck.

The light retreats. Leonardo coughs, sucks in air, breathes, lives. He is alive. He wants the light back. He is alive and his brothers are-

A pair of fists pound futilely on Leonardo's plated chest.

"Your brothers are dead. She's dead. They're all dead. Now you know."

_No, _Leonardo tells himself, weakly.

"How can she be dead? How can she, when I-"

_No, please, no. _

Tears sliding down skin, for even monsters can love.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

The last things he remembers from the battle:

Michelangelo crying out for his brothers, Karai's metal doppelgangers closing in.

Donatello's battle cry, a machine rushing into Shredder's waiting arms.

Karai, still refusing to make a choice: the ring of metal on metal, of metal lancing through flesh, of betrayal heaped upon remorse upon betrayal.

Raphael, his insane Raphael, screaming his inarticulate rage.

Brothers dying around him, and Leonardo, lying at Karai's feet, closing his eyes...falling asleep. Shamefully relieved at the chance to rest.

Did he feel a brother's hand take his own, at the end?

He feels his heart twist on itself again, and does not know whether it is with old grief or fresh wounds.

_Pain is to be welcomed, because it tells you that you are strong enough._

Splinter's voice was always steel beneath the fatherly warmth.

_Master_, he apologizes, _I cannot do this without them. Without you. _

But he traces the kanji for endurance again and again, his finger extended feebly in the empty air. A heart beneath a blade. A heart beneath a blade.

His arm feels so heavy. He'd always carried a sword for his father, for his brothers, not for himself.

Now he has no one to carry it for, and yet he lives.

This is Karai's revenge, not her mercy.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

The thought should be like a burst of sunlight, like dawn after a long cold night-

_Donnie. Chapman never mentioned Donnie, did he? He talked about Mikey and Raphael...how they...but nothing about Donnie. He might still..._

-but no, it's just a streetlight seen through a sewer grate, the pale dregs of a winter's day. He doesn't want this. What is hope but an obligation to keep living?

Better, he tells himself, to die in this cell with all his duties fulfilled. Better to have nothing to lose here, to keep April's secrets from her enemies, to meet his father in the next world without shame, to join his brothers at rest. Better that than this, with only Chapman's tender mercies for company.

_But what if one of your brothers is not there to meet me in the afterlife? _

He is cut in two. The sword edge of duty and family, of honour and love.

Karai, he thinks. Karai would have understood.

_To be a ninja is to be the sword edge. Endure. To be a ninja is to endure both hope and despair. _

He remembers, unwillingly, the gleam in Donatello's eye as he told them his plans, filled them with remembered hopes and old loves. Had their brother ever been so bright-eyed and brilliant? So inspiring, so full of faith in impossible things? The thought that he might still be alive hurts worse than Karai's sword.

He can almost hear it again: that heartbeat like an electric pulse, steady and strong, full of potential energy. Donnie was like that. But is Leonardo remembering the Donatello of his childhood, or the impossibly young Donatello that came back to them, that led them to their deaths?

_Maybe we wanted a brother so much, we made the ghost real. _

Two days with him, with Raphael by his side again, with a smile beginning to creep back into Michelangelo's voice. Two days as a family before Donatello took them to this place.

_Maybe we just imagined the part about ever being happy. _

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

Chapman is talking again.

"I'm developing a version of the Utrom mind control unit that will work on your unique physiology. I'm tailoring it just for you. It's a _lot_ of work for one prisoner."

Chapman's voice used to remind him of Donatello, Leonardo finds himself remembering.

"But it's a sure-fail way to get the information out of your head. You'll be just like our Utrom mind-slaves. You won't be able to even think about regaining your mind. You won't even feel like you've lost yourself."

Donnie's voice would light up with excitement at practically anything: black holes and supernovas, that set of vintage transistors he'd scrounged once, Mikey's Star Wars minutiae and Raph's motorcycle talk, things Leonardo would never take joy in himself but for that almost childish joy in his brother's voice-that spark that said _this is what I love, let me share it with you_.

"Everything you know, everything you ever cared about, everything you are-all ours. Including the information we want. So...instead of going through all that trouble, why don't you just tell us what you know about the rebellion now? Save yourself the jail time, and save _me_ lots of work?"

There's a voice droning on and on above him. It's just like how Donnie's voice used to go on and on, like a pleasant background noise that no one would listen to.

"You're losing your last chance here. You're consigning yourself to this dark place."

_What happened to that voice? _Leonardo wonders drowsily. _Where did his science lead him, where did his love lead him? _

"Suit yourself."

If Leonardo knew, he'd follow him there.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

Chapman has not come for a long time now. Neither has the food, nor the water. Not even the torture. Has he been forgotten? Has Chapman been killed? Life for the resistance, death for Leonardo.

Leonardo contemplates his options.

Fat, healthy worms emerging from the tiny crevices in his stone walls. Infrequent visitors but slow, easy to catch.

(Michelangelo would have screamed, in his younger days.)

Hard-skinned cockroaches, skittering across the floor and climbing up his arms. The long antennae will be hard to get down his throat.

(Raphael would have gone insane, long ago.)

Rats, tiny cold feet pattering over Leonardo's legs, long tails brushing his shins. He thinks he can smell their mammalian blood, under the warm scent of their fur.

(Master Splinter would have recoiled, if he could hear Leonardo's thoughts now.)

Vermin, all. Sons of the silent age, the true winners of the Shredder's war, surviving, ingesting, thriving on the copious dead.

Vermin, all.

They could be food.

They, in turn, are waiting for Leonardo to die, to become food.

His body is filthy. His heart is filled with horrors. He wants clean water. He wants-

(But Donatello would have told him to eat, and to live. He would have a plan to fight.)

-he wants to see the sun again.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

_A heart beneath a blade, a heart beneath a blade..._

His hand is too heavy; he cannot trace the character in the air. He can only imagine its shape. His throat is too parched; he can only think the words.

_I have lost my blade. My heart_...

The monsters will have it soon.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

"What do you think? Is he ready?"

"He's practically a corpse. He's ready."

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

A heartbeat like an electric pulse, strong and steady, yet full of potential energy. A time that might have been a dream, a wonderful dream that died thirty years ago.

Leonardo thinks he might be delirious.

"Leo."

He is hearing an impossible voice.

"Leo, please. Brother. It's me."

Hands holding his face, tenderly. Reptile hands, three fingers, crisscrossed by scars and burns, familiar but unfamiliar. Old hands, the leather hard.

He must be delirious.

The hands tip his chin upward. Water, lukewarm and tasting faintly of iodine, trickles into his mouth. The most delicious thing he's ever tasted. He grasps the hands in front of him, takes the offered canteen. Gulps down as much as he can. Coughs and spills on himself, feels the wetness splash down his chest. It feels real enough.

He speaks for the first time in what feels like years.

"Don?"

He imagines he can see it, his brother's tentative smile. _His _Donatello, flesh and blood forty-six year of age, not a youthful phantom from the past. Impossible. But Leonardo is allowed to conjure up the impossible in his own hallucinations.

"Yes, it's me," Donatello's voice murmurs. "Leo...let me see your face."

The sunglasses are lifted away. Fingertips press lightly over his closed eyelids, surgeon-precise. Leonardo suddenly recalls the feel of those same hands, applying ointments, wrapping him in bandages, healing his hurts after a thousand battles, a thousand years ago.

"You're blind," says Donatello, voice raw. Fresh grief for old wounds.

Leonardo nods. Traces his fingers up his impossible brother's arm. Skin gives way to coarse metal, flaking and bubbling with rust, studded with old rivets. _He should repair that_, he thinks.

Donatello is silent as Leonardo's hands continue their exploration, mapping the familiar-yet-unfamiliar landscape of his brother's skin. More metal than flesh now. An arm that ends in a gun-a cannon, really-rather than a hand. Like something out of a science fiction movie. But with his arm like that, how could he use...

"Your bo...?" Leonardo asks, trailing off, saying as little as possible. His voice feels as rusted as his brother's skin.

Hesitation. A quick intake of breath, through the mouth, then a small sigh of pained recognition.

"That's right," Donatello says slowly. I used to use a staff."

A Donatello without his bo-it does not seem like something Leonardo would imagine. He should not believe in phantoms. He should not dare to hope. But...

He clutches the metal arm roughly. "Tell me you're real," he says. "Lie to me if you have to, just tell me you're real."

A chuckle, not a happy sound. A body kneeling down, settling in front of him. The faint smell of gun oil, and beneath that coal dust and ashes. A hand coming to rest on his shoulder. "Sometimes I questioned it myself, whether it was real. The things that have happened to me, Leo...God, I-."

It's not enough to convince him, but the way Donatello says his name this time, _Leo_, the way he always used to say it when he was weary and a little broken and wanting someone to confide in, a leader to show him the way...

_He might be real. He is asking me for help. He is broken like me, like our brothers._

"Tell me," Leonardo says, stronger now, filling himself up with another's need. "Where have you been?"

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

There are nightmares worse than the world he lives in.

"There is a great empire of worlds in the centre of the galaxy, a peaceable empire," Donatello explains with practiced detachment. Leonardo knows, even now, what that tone means. "It's being torn apart by monsters. We simply call them Beasts, because we don't know enough about them to give them a more descriptive name. No one knows what they look like, because as soon as you look at them you become one of them. We've tried sending people in with ultrared, infrared, gamma ray scanners, even old analogue cameras I've whipped up. Nothing works. We can't study them directly. When we fight them, we close our eyes and pray.

"We don't know what they want. At first they only attacked the fringe planets, but now they have come to the heart of the empire. They travel from world to world, consuming every bit of energy and matter they find. Including _people_...converting them into...whatever it is their bodies are made up of.

"The sounds they make when they...it's awful, Leo. I can't describe it. They are evil. We kill them without question. There is no reason to hesitate when it comes to Beasts."

"My job is to warn the worlds that they are coming."

Leonardo listens attentively, knowing that he can't truly appreciate the enormity of the tale. It's too big. Only his brother's quiet agony, the years of struggle lying behind his words, seem real to him.

"They're coming here, aren't they," he says.

"Yes." A dull whisper, a shiver of fear. "I didn't think it would affect me this much, I've seen so many worlds fall, but..."

"But this is NYC, the center of everything. Even without the Knicks."

A moment of surprised silence. Then Donatello gives a hearty laugh. It is, Leonardo catches himself thinking, exactly like sunlight breaking through clouds.

And something Beast-like in Leonardo's heart is chased back to the shadows for a little while.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

He listens and learns more about the enemy. What works against them, what doesn't. Donatello sits beside him and talks and talks, uses four-syllable words that Leonardo can't possibly understand. It's just like old times.

Donatello winds down eventually. Even he runs out of words. But he unzips the bag at his side, rummages around, muttering, and this is so much like old times too that it hurts.

"I made something for you, Leo."

Something cold and thin and metal is pressed into Leonardo's palms. Naked steel, but the blade is etched with symbols his fingers cannot read. It thrums strangely as soon as it touches his fingers. A gift, of course, because Donatello was always giving them gifts. Leonardo's heart stops for a moment in remembrance as his fingers slide against the engraved blade, the cross-hatched rough of the hilt.

"One of the few things that can hurt them. I had a warlock and a master smith help me," Donatello explains.

_Did you bring a pair of sais and nunchakus like this too? _he thinks, the words stuck in his throat. _Two sais for Raphael, one nunchaku for Michelangelo? How did you know to bring only one sword for me? _

He wonders, suddenly, how Donatello knew that Leonardo had given up his second sword. How Donatello knew to come here at all. How he knew so much, and yet was surprised to learn that Leo was blind. A prickling feeling creeps up the back of his neck, like a premonition before battle, or a recollection after a dream.

Then his brother's voice breaks gently into his thoughts: "I made this for you, and only you, because you'll be able to fight them better than anyone. I know you'll give us a shot at winning." Proud, admiring, almost shy.

Leonardo shakes off his strange feeling, ignores it, and gives a wry grin. "Because I'm used to fighting blind, and that's exactly what you need to fight the Beasts?"

"No," Donatello replies, and traces an X shape over Leonardo's heart. "Because you're you, Leo. There's no one I trust more."

The feeling that wells up in his chest is almost painful. Almost like a scalpel cutting through him. Leonardo holds the sword, holds his brother's words, not knowing how to answer. How can he answer such faith, when he stopped believing in belief so long ago?

"I should have known you'd come back," he murmurs. "I should have trusted you the way you've kept on trusting me. I should have looked harder for you."

The air barely stirs as Donatello shakes his head once, removes his hand. "I know you, Leo. Stop blaming yourself. Forget about the past, forget about things that aren't your fault. We can sit around feeling sorry about what we've lost, or we can move on." His voice softens. "I need you here _now_."

Yes. He will make it up to his brother from now on. _Forget about the past_, he tells himself, echoing Donatello's words. _Forget guilt, forget loss. _The sword is a comforting weight in his hands. He tells himself he will become worthy of it. The steel is strong enough to slay the monsters in his heart, the Beasts that live outside it.

Donatello watches him, staying silent for a moment. Then, seeming satisfied with what he sees, says: "There's a lot we have to do, Leo. You must understand-the Earth has to be united." There is a worried note to his voice now. "I've seen it on other worlds, what happens when they aren't ready."

"You mean-"

"We can't allow the Shredder's empire to fall apart. We need to have the organization, the manufacturing, the manpower. Centralized and efficient."

Leonardo nods, numbing himself to the images his brother's words conjure up. Soldiers and tanks, factories and weapons. A strong military, under one leader. _Obey the Shredder_, Karai's voice rings out. _He is your lord and master. _

_Duty and honour and family_, he thinks. _Karai, was this what it was like for you? _

He hates to think about what he'll have to do to win this war. About what he's done, what he'll be undoing. He spent his life, spent his brothers' lives, trying to take down a regime that he has to rebuild now. All their suffering, April's rebellion, April's dead child...April, who has to be made to understand their new goal. The erasure of the old one.

As if reading his thoughts, Donatello says, "April has to...she has to understand. We need to work together with her. I want to talk to her." He sounds wistful, and Leo remembers the two of them, heads bent together under the glow of a computer screen. "Do you know where I can find her?"

"Yes," Leonardo says, shaking himself out of his reverie. "I know where she is."

"Whisper it to me. In case someone is listening."

Leonardo feels, for a moment, a pinprick at the back of his head, like a mosquito drawing blood. He presses a hand there and feels nothing-just the old wound, where Karai's sword cut him. Donnie is giving him a strange look, so he shakes his head, gives him a reassuring smile.

He leans over, cupping his hand over the hollow of his brother's ear. Tells him April's secrets.

He can feel it when his brother smiles.

Then Donatello sighs. Turns so their foreheads are touching, side to side, leans against Leonardo ever so slightly. Makes him feel almost like himself again, that weight against him. They are children again, sharing secrets and warmth, breathing the same air.

A warm hand presses against the back of his neck. A jolt, like a shock of static electricity, runs through him.

"I'll fight this war for you," Leonardo promises in the dark. "I'll win it for you."

Donatello nods, every so slightly; Leonardo can feel it. "I know you will," he says quietly.

Leonardo lifts his own hand, brushes it against his brother's brow. There are deep furrows there, burdens he has carried alone for thirty years. But not anymore. Leonardo will make sure of that.

"You'll see the sun again," Donatello says, voice hushed, and from him it's a promise, a miracle in the making.

A breath, a heartbeat, a lifetime.

A whisper in the dark:

"Make this world into your sword."

Then Donatello stands, and is gone.

Leonardo does not need eyes to see him disappear.

- 0 - 0 -

_Funny, _he thinks as he drifts off into sleep. _He only wanted to know about April. We never got around to talking about the rest of our family. What were their names again? _

He is too tired to think about that now. His eyes fall shut.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

He wakes to find:

Cold sheet metal, pressed against his face. His own breaths, dry and shuddering, his tongue thick in his mouth. _Shuuuuuuu huuuuuu shuuuuuu. _

Footfalls, the sharp click of leather shoes, short and impatient. _Tap tap tap._

The slick stink of human sweat, the scald of bleach and formaldehyde, under him, around him, on him, screaming _dissection scientists destroy kill. _

The sword. The sword not in his hand.

For now.

_Do not show your strength. _

Then: gloved hands touching him, two fingers placing themselves, lightly, against the back of his neck. Where the skin itches, and burns, and feels...tight, somehow, like electricity.

He has to force himself not to move, not to twist out of his bonds, to keep breathing.

The cloying scent of alcohol, then Chapman's voice: "I'd say this operation was a success, gentlemen." Smug, self-satisfied. "We even got the street address. Well, what used to be a street address. General Flears is already dispatching a unit. I must say, I do good work."

"Sir, what about these anomalous readings?"

"Nothing to worry about. He's a reptile, you can't expect him to produce the same brain wave patterns as an Utrom. That would be like comparing humans to dogs." Sharp-edged, callous.

The sound of latex gloves being stretched, pulled off, tossed into a metal can.

"Let's see how well he follows orders."

Hands at his wrists, at his ankles, unlatching his bindings.

"Sir...is that really a good idea?"

A soft click as the last cuff comes off.

"I _said_ the procedure went well."

"I agree, sir, but-"

"Your tone says otherwise! Are you questioning my competence? I invented this procedure."

"Of course not, sir, but the creature was already dangerous, and with the neuro-enhancers-"

"It's always like this. Our Mistress entrusted this Empire to me. I am the Emperor!" Voice rising petulantly, childish.

The slide of leather shoes, hesitant, on linoleum floor.

"My lord, I-"

"I see it now, doctor. Who bought you off? Which of those so-called warlords? Traitors, all of them. You as well! I should have your head off!" Higher and higher he climbs, dancing on the sword edge of madness.

And Leonardo knows it is time to strike.

He opens his eyes.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Where did he get that sword!" Chapman screams.

No reply, other than the gurgle of the other man's severed neck.

Chapman stumbles backward. Huddles into himself, hands clawing through his greying hair. "Why are you doing this?" Feeble, an insect-like whine. "Why didn't it work? You were supposed to be loyal!"

"I am," Leonardo says.

He steps closer. The back of his neck is throbbing, but it's not painful. His chest hurts, but he can bear it. His sunglasses are gone, but it doesn't matter.

"No," Chapman whimpers. Then: "No no no NO NO!

His face contorts with fear. Leonardo's eyes drink in everything, thirsty for light.

Polished metal trays filled with bright metal implements, neatly arranged on plastic shelves. A white-coated man lying across a table, unmoving, in a pool of spreading red. Chapman, hair grey and brittle, his own white coat splattered with blood, cowering against those shelves. Hands searching through the metal trays, cutting themselves on the saws and scalpels and worse things there.

And, in Leonardo's own hands: a sword, a cold blue-white fire. It is sleek and spare, shaped out of chi gathered from his own soul. It does not waver at all. It is the sword his brother gave him, and yet it is not.

Leonardo sees the brightness, the shape of it. The fine arc it traces as it cuts through air, through flesh. A flash of white, then red.

He had forgotten how red.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -

Grey granite walls, solid and dependable. A host of polished steel operating tables, arranged in tidy rows. Clean white computer terminals, sleek comm systems. Weapon racks bristling with rifles and machine guns and swords, neatly labeled cupboards filled with ammunition. A heavy iron door, unguarded, unlocked.

This fortress, its armies, its allies, its enemies, its Beasts. This empire. The world remade into his sword. He sees, he sees.

He passes through the door, walks the hallways. Kills anyone who opposes him. Finds his way outside.

Smells the burning air, hears the report of gunshot, watches slavers and slaves alike enfolded in this war, his war. Bleeding together into a mass of greys and browns and reds. Chaos, untamed, unpolished, the sword edge still dull. Beasts, all, waiting to be tamed.

He looks up.

The sun is very bright, just like his brother promised.

Leonardo stares into it, unflinching.

- End -

Author's notes:

Did you know that Chapman and Donatello have the same voice actor? 0_o

wiki/Sam_Riegel

I will freely admit the first torture scene in this fic is completely ripped off from/inspired by _The Princess Bride._

_Ninja _is written 忍者 in Japanese. The first character 忍 means "endurance," among other things, and it is composed of the radicals 刃 ("blade") and 心 ("heart"). The second character 者 just means "person."

Regarding Leo's blindness in this fic...in the episode "Same As It Never Was" it's never stated that Leo is blind, ha ha, but he does wear sunglasses all the time despite the complete lack of sunlight, so fandom sure likes to imagine he's blind. I, though, often imagine he is just doing the sunglasses to be cool though, or his idea of cool. Fail, Leo. But for the purposes of this fic I'll accept the fan interpretation of sunglasses=blindness instead of my own suspicions that sunglasses=Morpheus-wannabe.

On a more writerly note...I don't think I've ever tinkered as much with a fic as I've done with this one. I spent _way _too much time rearranging scenes. I also spent a lot of time trying to create _some _kind of dramatic flow. This is challenging when you write a fic where the main character is a blind guy sitting around in a jail cell and there is almost zero action (lolz). I suspect I need to make some huge cuts, but find myself unable to decide where so bleeargh post it and done with it.


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